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Aeon has an interesting article on bullshit:
We live in the age of information, which means that we also live in the age of misinformation. Indeed, you have likely come across more bullshit so far this week than a normal person living 1,000 years ago would in their entire lifetime. If we were to add up every word in every scholarly piece of work published prior to the Enlightenment, this number would still pale in comparison with the number of words used to promulgate bullshit on the internet in the 21st century alone.
If you find your head nodding, start shaking it. I’m bullshitting you.
Ha! I knew it!
How could I possibly know how much bullshit you have come across this week? What if you’re reading this on a Sunday? Who is a ‘normal’ person living 1,000 years ago? And how could I know how much bullshit they had to deal with?
It was very easy to construct this bullshit. Once I set out to impress rather than inform, a burden was lifted from my shoulders and placed onto yours. My opening statements could very well be true, but we have no way of knowing. Their truth or falsity were irrelevant to me, the bullshitter.
[...] In his book, On Bullshit (2005), Frankfurt noted that ‘most people are rather confident of their ability to recognise bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it’. However, more than 98 per cent of our participants rated at least one item in our bullshit receptivity scales to be at least somewhat profound. We are not nearly as good at detecting bullshit as we think.
So, how might you – the reader – vaccinate yourself against it? For a non-spiritualist, it might be relatively easy to recognise when Chopra or Oz are concerned less with the truth than selling books or entertaining viewers. But think back to my opening paragraph. Bullshit is much harder to detect when we want to agree with it. The first and most important step is to recognise the limits of our own cognition. We must be humble about our ability to justify our own beliefs. These are the keys to adopting a critical mindset – which is our only hope in a world so full of bullshit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @11:25PM (10 children)
Janirock, Takyon and the rest of the editors shield us from being subjected to overwhelming bullshit on this site. Isn't that right aristarchus?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday July 20 2018, @12:16AM (5 children)
Irony meter broke again! But the point of the Fine Article, at least in part, is that you cannot fight bullshit with more or different bullshit.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @12:33AM (3 children)
You absolutely can, that's how politics works.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday July 20 2018, @01:02AM (1 child)
Recently, the fashion is to fight bullshit by drowning it in mountains of bullshit, then dig the mountain to fight the original bullshit, polish it, present it to the public in a way that seems to make it explode worse than the first time, rebury it in a mix of ancient and improved fresh bullshit, and move on to the next day's bullshit, correctly guessing that the public will just follow.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @04:44AM
Gee? You have a PHD too?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday July 20 2018, @02:46AM
And look were fighting bullshit with bullshit lands us all. Everybody loses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 20 2018, @02:54AM
While you actually can, there's that minor nagging detail about the reasons and result of such a fight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Friday July 20 2018, @12:45AM (3 children)
The 9% acceptance rate from starchy is a bit too high.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday July 20 2018, @02:15AM (2 children)
And the 98% acceptance rate for takyon submissions seems a bit too low. Not suggesting that there might be collusion, or a common funding source with the Brexit and Trump campaigns. I mean, why would there be?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday July 20 2018, @02:10PM (1 child)
Answer: They're Young Turks, and you're an old Greek. I mean, seriously, how do you not know this?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday July 20 2018, @11:07PM
What makes you believe I do not? Age gives one patience, and endurance; we can just wear out the young whipper-snappers.